Artists, including dancers, in Eire (Southern Ireland) have some of the most beneficial tax arrangements found anywhere.

Artists who have claimed tax exemption to be ‘outed’ By Andrew Bushe for The Sunday Times (Eire)

MORE than 2,000 painters, sculptors, authors and composers have been told by the Revenue Commissioners that they are about to be “outed” as beneficiaries of the artists’ tax exemption between 1998 and 2001.

The publication of their names follows a ruling by Emily O’Reilly, the ombudsman, following an application under the Freedom of Information Act.

BENEATH the cobbled streets of Dublin’s fair city there used to be a subterranean village. Known as the catacombs, it was a kind of underground doss-house, which provided a mean shelter for the homeless, among them the bohemian writers Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan.....Ireland in the 1950s was not hospitable to its artists. They earned a pittance and were regarded with about as much tolerance as lepers.

The difference today could not be more marked. Cronin, who is 76, suggests we meet not in an establishment frequented by the fabled literati of yore but in a gleaming hotel on St Stephen’s Green. Amidst the din of midweek cocktail drinkers, he lays aside his bunnet and recalls his not insignificant part in the cultural revolution.

Tax does not make for the most popular read, but this article reports on a key and potentially damaging decision for the UK

arts world:

VAT threat to altruism is far more than a taxing questionFrom The Stage

The men and women of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise occupy a position in the public affection somewhat similar to that of traffic wardens, bailiffs and car-clampers. To a great extent this goes with the territory. It is difficult to be loved when one’s occupation derives from depriving others of their money. Yet, like it or not, the work they do is a necessary evil of modern life.

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